Friday, January 09, 2009

Egg White Cake Recipe (Munavalgekook)

Have you been making ice cream or perhaps zabaglione recently? If yes, then you're left with lots of egg whites. Last weekend we had blackberries with zabaglione at friends' place, and were left with 6 egg whites after that. K. had already made the most beautiful macarons for the New Year's Eve party (see Flickr photo set here), so I had to come up with another idea. Meringues or pavlova are always an option, but then I remember an egg white cake recipe my schoolmate Kristel had shared on my Estonian site, where it had got good reviews. I decided to give it a go.

It's a bit similar to the famous Angel Cake (heavy on egg whites, no egg yolks), but it's not as virtuous as it contains almost a stick of butter. Psst - don't tell anyone! :)

And it was lovely. Very simple to make (especially with the help of my trustworthyKitchenAid Stand Mixer), and I loved the dense, moist and small crumb of the resulting cake. I made a plain version, but would consider adding some Nielsen Massey Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Extract or real vanilla seeds, or perhaps couple of drops of Boyajian pure orange oil next time.. In any case it's a good recipe to have on hand when you've got lots of egg whites but don't feel like making meringues..

Whisk the egg whites with 2 Tbsp of sugar until thick and pale and very foamy. Mix the rest of the sugar with flour, potato starch and baking powder, then sift into the egg mixture and fold in gently.
Finally fold in cool melted butter.
Pour the batter into a buttered bundt-form and bake in a pre-heated 180 C oven for 30-40 minutes. Test for doneness with a wooden toothpick.
Cool slightly before turning out of the cake tin.

greetings from canada! i made a pile of creme brulee and want to do something other than tiresome old angel food cake with all my yummy whites so can't wait to try this.

one question: when you say corn flour, would that be corn starch in north america? they are two different things but i am led to believe that in england when corn flour is mentioned, it is actually what we call corn starch here so i wonder if it might be the same in estonia.

Well, many thanks for the super recipe. I had 10 egg whites left over from a std yellow cake recipe. So I adjusted the recipe a bit and cheated - adding 1tsp of rasberry extract and putting my mother-in-law's homemade rasberry-blackberry jam in the middle... much of the jam sunk during cooking making a caramelised bottom... so the kids and i decided to turn the cake upside down - rave reviews from everyone. Many many thanks to you and Estonia. Best cooking regards, Valerie (American settled in Paris). Can't wait to try the other recpies.

Hello, I did it! It is delicious ! I've make some changes but not very important :). Thank you very much for your recipe !Here is the link , is in Romanian.http://amalia-mylife.blogspot.com/2009/05/prajitura-din-albusuri.html

It's lovely to find that I can bake a cake with egg whites. I just did a batch of Vanilla Thins (some call Cat's Tongue), but in my hot country, it's never come out quite pretty. Thanks for sharing, I will bake the cake soon!

After making a lime tart recently I had seven unused egg whites left. I made your cake, with some vanilla extract and topped off with some lime-flavoured icing. Delicious! I would never have thought that a cake could be made this way. Thanks very much for the recipe.

Great recipe. I've tried it without the butter too and it is really delicious. I use the idea of putting a ring of jam (more of a sauce type jam) in the middle at the end just before putting in the oven. Wonderful. I also use some almond oil in the batter. I don't have a bundt pan anymore so I use an angel food pan an it works great.Thanks for sharing this great recipe!

This recipe look perfect for all of the egg whites that keep growing in my freezer, as a result of David Lebovit's "Perfect Scoup" masterpiece. Is there any chance you could convert the measurements from metric to U.S. measurements? Sorry for the lame request, but all of my conversion tables give me different amounts, so I'm a bit stuck here. Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks so much........Mark

I'm so glad I found this recipe, I no longer feel I have to make a pavlova everytime I'm left with egg whites. Made it with four egg whites and adjusted the other ingredients to 66% of original. Next time would put baking paper on base of tin - needed a really good shake to get cake out of tin - but was still in one piece :)Love the texture of the cake.

I made this using brown sugar instead of white (I was out.) It was delicious! Now I am thinking I could substitute some of the butter for chunky applesauce, add some cinnamon and have a nice, fall apple cake! Thanks for the recipe!

yummmmm.....i'm 13 i have never really made anything ever and that was by far the best thing i've ever tasted if i do say so myself ;P thankyou for the recipe , your a bit of an inspiration to me. i'll make sure to make it again

Great recipe! Thanks for posting. We make homemade ice cream weekly and always have a dozen egg whites left. I used a cardamon spice mix I had from cookies the first time, really good. Today I used vanilla bean seeds. Really good too. Such a good base for experimenting with flavorings. Very different than the angelfood cake I usually use. Tonight we'll have some with homemade orange sherbert. I really reccommend this recipe.

I just made a batch of ice cream and had just nice 6 egg whites left. Made your recipe with 2 modifications. I cut the sugar down to 180g and added zest of 3/4 lemon. It was so good! You totally don't miss the yolks! One of my most successful cakes ever. Thanks!

Wonderful cake. nothing like angel cake, and thank you for that! I added 1 tsp of lemon oil extract. Fabulous results. I will add more than the 6 egg whites next time, and bake in a cake pan or muffin cups. Would be wonderful muffins with afternoon tea and jam.

Great idea! Thank you for sharing. As another commenter said, a nice alternative to angel food cake. I used white whole wheat flour and it came out wonderful. I'm thinking of all the delicious liquors that could be added in the future ... keep up the great work!!

I made this cake yesterday, frosted it with whipping cream and piled raspberries on top and it was delicious!

Will definitely make it again, but would like some more specifics on what state the whipped egg whites should be in prior to folding in the dry ingredients and the butter - prior to soft peaks, soft peaks, stiff peaks, or stiff and dry? I didn't understand which of these was meant by pale and thick. Thank you.

Well, I've made it twice now - the first time I think I under beat the egg whites, and the second time I think I over beat them. Third time's the charm? Somewhere in between. A bit more direction from the recipe's creator would be welcome...

My family and I love lemon curd and our tree just produced a couple hundred lemons again this year but everyone is getting sick of the meringue and pavlovas I usually make with the leftover egg whites.My curd recipe leaves me with 6 whites so this was perfect. My little sister loves rose syrup as cordial so I decided to flavour with that. I added a large splash of it after the butter before folding and as with the dry ingredients I found it a bit tough to mix thoroughly while being gentle to the fluffy whites but I managed to mix it enough that it didn't have any noticeable lumps and tasted great throughout without loosing too much volume.Thanks for the wonderful recipe which I'm sure I will repeat with various flavours.I noticed a commenter who used limes which sounds good as we have a huge lime tree too :)

Dear Pille,I just made this cake, and I am tasting it right now! It's awesome! Quite dense, but in a good way, very soft, tender, and buttery. It tastes like a nice cross between a pound cake and an angel food cake. It is very easy to make too. I doubled the recipe (used 12 egg whites), because I have a very large bundt cake mold, and because I had a ton of egg whites in the freezer. (I like making lemon tarts and lime tarts, and lemon curd uses a lot of egg yolks.) It baked for 1 hr 5 mins. The only thing I would do differently next time is using a little less sugar. It tastes just a bit too sweet to me. Thanks for a great recipe!

Played around with recipe it worked a treat. Can't help but tinker!Used less sugar 175g; substituted 60g of flour with ground almonds; added chopped abate pear and freshly grated ginger with a bit of the crystalised stuff.Delicious! Thank you for the original recipe

thanks so much for this great recipe!!! I make a lot of carbonara, and have a ton of egg whites in my freezer. will be trying the plain version first and then another with some tweaks. once again, thanks for posting this recipe.

Happy New Year :-) I had some egg whites left after Christmas and wasn't too keen on making another round of meringue… So I googled for other recipes and then found your blog post and I decided to try the recipe. Since I only had three egg whites I halved the recipe and made muffins instead. I did reduce the sugar amount somewhat (I'm not too much of a "sweet-tooth") and added a bit of vanilla sugar for taste. I was so amazed that such "basic" ingredients could turn out so deliciously good, this is a winner & so so easy to make! I'm a food blogger myself, writing in Norwegian only I'm afraid, but I have posted the recipe and referred to your blog, here's the blog post link: http://monasmatblogg.blogspot.no/2014/01/nydelig-gode-eggehvite-muffins.html . Thanks a lot for a great recipe :-) Regards, Mona

Happened upon your recipe and loved it! It reminds me a lot of pound cake only lighter. I did cut back on the sugar a bit and added some vanilla. I can't wait to play with this recipe some more too, because I can tell it probably would lend itself to lots of other flavor variations. Thanks!

Wish I'd found this recipe years ago! Only found it today as my freezer is on the blink and did not want to waste all of the egg white lake that was defrosting. We always have egg whites as my hubby loves to make savoury tarts like quiche and they always use extra yolks. No one likes meringues In the family and there's only so many macaroons you can eat. This is fab! A proper cake with lots of scope for variation. Will be making it again and again and coming back to this fab blog. Thanks!

I'm can't wait to try this recipe as I have 7 egg whites left over from my custard bread pudding. Do you think almond paste would be good in this cake and if so, how much and how would I incorporate it?

Definitely a nice recipe keeper !!! I hv 3egg whites leftover in the fridge so I just cut downall ingredients into half and also add in vanilla extract with splash of lemon juice plus teaspoon of poppy seeds but less a bit amount of sugar !taste perfect and raise successfully !!I'm thinking about to make a chocolate version but just wondering how should I play with the ingredients if anyone could advise ;-)